GamesRelay - Has CAPCOM's Resident Evil series lost its way?

It was back in 1996 when the first Resident Evil game graced our presence, sure there had been horror games before it, but none quite struck a cord like the original Resident Evil did.

[Rikitatsu]

...Since Shinji Mikami (Father of the series) and the rest of Capcom Production Studio 4 went to PlatinumGames after Resident Evil 4.

[Hellsvacancy]

I cant stand the Resident Evil series any-more, the 1st 2-games are real gamin classics, the 3rd was ok, didnt play the 4th, but 5? OH DEAR GOD, wot where they thinkin? 1 of the worst games ive ever played in my life

The films r even worse, and that CGI video that came out was total bollocks aswell

Capcom should re-imagin the whole series and start again

1 positive that did cum outta Res-5 was Wesker, i called my cat after him (hes black)

[lociefer]

let the disagrees pour in, but the series was dead to me after res3: nemesis, 4 was alrit, but after u play 1-2-3, u just cant help but feel something is wrong

[GodsHand]

I agree after part 3 what happened? All of a sudden no more zombies, it was parasites. I mean Part 4 is still great, part 5 is ok. But what Happened. I still don't know what ever happened to Barry from part one, wtf that dude was cool imo. I never played RE:0 or the Nintendo wii/DS games. Code Veronica was great but where did all m y zombies go, I surely could not have killed them all, could I have?

[Hellsvacancy]

Oh yeah Code-Veronica wasnt a bad game either nor was OutBreak File 1&2 its just when zombies start turnin up wieldin chainsaws at ya and then when u kill the mofos they melt on the floor u know its lost ALL appeal

[deadreckoning666]

I have all the main RE games except 5(cause I didn't like it). There not SCARY anymore. I remember playing RE3 and I shat my pants when Nemesis came out of no where. Without a doubt, one of the scariest enemies in videogame history.

[bacon13]

Resident evil 1 and 2 are classics while I feel 3 and Code: Veronica while good in their own right, strayed from the formula established by the first 2. Resident Evil 4 was a fantastic game and much creepier and better paced than 5 which didn't even seem like a Resident Evil game in my eyes. I love the RE games, mythology and story arcs but it's hard to see where this series can go. It might be time to lay it to rest though that will never happen, the series produces too much $.

[himdeel]

...was stolen by Dead Space for me. RE5 was okay but Dead Space gave me everything I expected RE5 to deliver and then some. Anything CAPCOM has planned with RE6 or whatever RE game they decide to produce next will be compared to Dead Space.

The movie franchise also needs a serious reboot as well.

[Somnipotent]

wanted to make the biohazard series into what we know now as devil may cry... looking at both in retrospect, it's a good thing he left. my earliest memory of psx gaming with dropping the controller after the first zombie scene in resident evil 1. it was the first time in my gaming life that i was actually scared to play a video game. devil may cry and resident evils 4 and 5 are a far cry what they use to be. resident evil/biohazard just isn't the same without the zombies and creepy atmosphere.

i miss having to ration my ammo and supplies and having to think my way through things. now all i have to do is kill a few beasties and they drop ammo. they need to remake the gamecube remake for ps3/360. i'd buy that before buying resident evil 5 gold.

[fossilfern]

i agree with lociefer

The RE series has turned stale 1,2 were amazing games and 3 was good too but 4 was alright and 5 was a total mistake they should just remake number 2 keep everyone happy and take note from Dead Space thats how it should be done :) bring back the horror capcom cuz 4 & 5 were not survival horror they were just shooters

[zeeshan]

They have lost it man. They completely lost it! Resident Evil 5 was the worst of all. CAPCOM should learn a thing or two playing Dead Space.

[Rikitatsu]

You have no idea about what you're talking about.
That was Hideki Kamiya, not Shinji Mikami.

Resident Evil 4 started development under the direction of Hideki Kamiya, but it seemed to "different" than a Resident Evil game, so they changed it to Devil May Cry, and Shinji Mikami went on to direct the Resident Evil 4 we know today.

[Guido]

Nuff said.

[sikbeta]

You don't what are you talking about

SM had the idea of create a new RE borrowing some stuff from SH which is more like Psycho-Survival-Horror

After that, they went to far with this idea and DMC came out, SM convince the Director of blah blah blah (don't remember) to release this game as a new Franchise and Kamiya became DIRECTOR of the game

After that RE4 idea start from scratch again, because of the "media" and "fans" complaining saying REø and REmake were "teh same"

So, SM said he was going to make a REAL CHANGE with RE4 and he did, but after the poor support of the GC fanbase and teh lackluster salez of the Capcom 5 project (4games came out, last 1 canned), RE4 was ported to PS2 with more stuff on it

SM left Capcom and the whole studio 4/clover team end up fired

On-Topic

Yes, since SM left Capcom RE series became Cr@p, RE4 is the last RE game for me, some people complain because it wasn't the same but RE:N with the whole Nemesis thing was the same as MR X in RE2

Sometimes a little of Innovation is an important key instead of the same milking franchises ala COD

[Rikitatsu]

You do realize that the director (Hideki Kamiya) is the one who write the concept of a game and everything, while the producer (Shinji Mikami) overlooks and guides the project?

Resident Evil 4 was at first in the hands of Kamiya, the director, and Shinji Mikami was the producer, the game changed so much under Kamiya from the RE gameplay style, so Mikami (or whoever in charge) decided it should be a new IP instead of a RE game, that's when DMC was born.

How the hell do you claim that Shinji Mikami wanted to make RE into Devil May Cry when he actually prevented that from being done?

[TheBand1t]

Yep. Dead Space has now replaced Resident Evil as my preferred horror game.

[Mahr]

"resident evils 4 and 5 are a far cry what they use to be. resident evil/biohazard just isn't the same without the zombies and creepy atmosphere."

This is a good thing. The more the series distances itself from the pre-4 era, the better.

"i miss having to ration my ammo and supplies and having to think my way through things."

Yes, and there are people who miss the days when losing all your lives at the final boss meant having to play the entire game over from scratch, and there are people who miss the days when games lacked maps or any sort of instructive direction to tell players where to go, and there are people who miss the days of platformers where players couldn't control movement post-jump.

This is what happens when young people play terribly-designed games and then let nostalgia get the better of them and enshrine those awful mechanics as some sort of artistic brilliance.

Mikami moved Resident Evil out of the stone age. For that alone, Capcom should want to bring him back to the series.

[chidori666]

yeha.. after the resident code veronica re died..

[Wolfie]

umm no, Resident Evil Remake was great and RE0 was ok.

[bjornbear]

or didn't adapt to the gameplay change in RE4.

But its very alive and thriving for me and many others =D

[sikbeta]

"after the resident code veronica re died"

NO! RE5 made cr@p the whole Franchise

[hatchimatchi]

1,2,3,CV(steve burnside is a douche) & 4 are all great games.

5 on the other hand is horrible. When looked at as just a game it's pretty good, but as a RE title, it just sucks.

RE needs to get away from the parasites and whatnot and back to full fledged zombies, no more zombies with weapons and driving trucks. I wanna be stuck in a creepy dark environment by myself (no co-op) and have to horde ammo like there's no tomorrow. I also wanna hit triangle to pull up a classic style inventory, i absolutely hated the inventory system in 5. Capcom failed hard with RE5, not to mention they gave away the twist with that horrible ad campaign of Chris standing by Jills' grave. Also, when the hell did jill ever have blonde hair? That makes no sense whatsoever.

[bigboss911]

jills hair was caused by her infection, which started in Re3, and her pale complexion too.

[mastiffchild]

Capcom have made some awful decisions this generation in terms of their existing big francj=hises, imo. SF4's focus moves, among other things which made me wish that SF2THDR had been blessed with the online of SF4 instead were poor, DMC4 and it's "fight everything twice!" switcheroo is so old hat it only helped an already anaemic sequel go further round the U-bend and as for RE5, what can I say?

It took the worst part of RE4 and, because of the desire(fashionable!)to accommodate Co-op, forced a whole game out of it in SP! Noone liked escorting Ashley yet we had to do the same thing for the whole game this time but gave her a gun and changed her colour but not how annoying "she" was! Sheva's AI wasn't up to it and resulted in a broken game, imo, for anyone not playing online co-op-and what if you like SP games(where SH is best too) or have no internet/crap internet? Even if your broadband's fine there's still no replay valueand less scares(playing with a mate makes it FUNNY not scary!)to boot as after one playthrough it palls quickly. And don't mention the Vs content. Crap.

No reason they can't reboot it to excellence, mind, but I'm not among those feeling Capcom can do no wrong this gen as, to me,last gen was WAY,WAY better from them and RE5 is their lowest water mark on PS3/PC/360(CTYD is their lowest of a VERY low bunch that borders on insulting on the Wii post Okami and RE4 and excepting only MH3)and is, so far, the only RE title I've ever traded-and I've even kept UC on Wii!

[Nitrowolf2]

Full pledge zombie not parasites
Make it more of a horror game and less of an action game
That were i saw RE5 go with action then horror
i mean come on zombies dont drive and hold guns

[bigboss911]

dude thats the whole point of the series. its not a "zombie game" its about an evil corporation developing biohazard weapons. cant stand all the complainers in here. Leave Re alone. And zombies were never the plan for Umbrella, it was the tyrants and wesker projects. the zombies getting loose was a mistake. I swear it like you people just went around shooting stuff and never bothered to read all the files, that clearly stated what was going on within the company.

[bjornbear]

some one here has read wesker's notes ;)

its fine, if people interpret the game in a different way and dislike it, thats their view on it, and it can't just be changed =/

i get the game totally and it makes sense to me even with degeneration.

can't wait to see what they do next =O!

however, i hope it ends soon, considering how the story is going.

[bigboss911]

speaking of degeneration, you wanna guess where Leon is going in that heli at the very end? ;)

[gtamike123]

Loved Resident Evil 0,1,2,3,4.

The gamecube remakes was really nice I got the gamecube just for the remakes and Resident Evil 4 at the time.

Resident Evil 4 was a really nice change, I beat the game so many times I lost count. The level design, weapons, story, gameplay was great.

Resident Evil 5 well that failed so hard this is coming from a res fan.
Level design was crap, like that stair level you know the one (press buttons). Story was meh and always a big Gun near a Boss battle -_-. Also monsters has lots of guns wtf... Only plus was the game graphics really.

[bjornbear]

And since the entertainment of the games only matters to me as a fan, thats all I need to worry about ^-^

however, i don't think it's lost its way at all, if anything its been super over the top and i love it =D

[Ninji]

No, Crapcom has.

[BYE]

Not really, Street Fighter 4 and Tatsunoko are awesome games.

[koehler83]

Nope. Still a campy zombie flick with terrible controls. Exactly what I remember on PS1.

[BYE]

RE4 was the last good one. The story was a little weird but it had great atmosphere, characters and damn good music.

RE5 is a game that's flooded with awful design decisions, the new team has proved that it has no clue how to make a Resident Evil game.

[CARRIERHASARRIVED]

Short answer: "YUP!"

Long answer: "Why, yes. The series certainly has."

[redDevil87]

I know it's harder to scare gamers nowadays because we've become accustomed to violent and scarier things as the series has prgressed e.g. manhunt, condemned, silent hill etc.

But bring back what a lot of Resi fans want... Horror!

[mrmikew2018]

I still have faith in the Resident evil series, but what Jun Takeuchi and his team did with RE 5 is unforgiveable. I'm a die hard RE fan and I was so disappointed with RE 5. Adding a multi-player aspect to a survior horror game doesn't work. Like Adam Sessler said "not every game needs a multiplayer. To this day I can't realize what capcom was thinking with that game.

[Baka-akaB]

uh ? Multiplayer added to horror games works fine thank you . Just ask Left 4 dead or resident evil Outbreak .

Re5 just happens to be a pretty but mediocre title , and without a shred of horror , and without zombies .

[CARRIERHASARRIVED]

I honestly believe that RE4 should have been a spinoff of some sort, and 5 should have continued that line of spinoffs. The series definitely isn't what it once was. Goes to show that success eventually ruins nearly everything.

[alexy0089]

i am a big RE fan, and i know where CAPCOM went wrong on RE5. Basically its a an action shooter, no longer does RE5 go under survival horror. you just run foward and your down with the game. the puzzles are not challenging like RE 1 2 3. and in RE1 2 3 you stay in the same areas fixing power, unlocking doors, searching for a crank. CAPCOM GET YOUR S*** TOGETHER OR YOUR FIRED

[The_Zeitgeist]

It's not just Capcom. We shouldn't leave Konami out of this either. What the heck has been up with the last few Silent Hill games as well?

[Fierce Musashi]

It went down hill the moment they changed it's genre from Survival Horror to Third-Person Shooter.

[ScubaSteve1]

goes to play resident remake, and wonders why did capcom not continue to make these games

[spunnups]

Just make it like Dead Space, Problem solved.

[The_Zeitgeist]

They should take it back to its roots but in a highly cinematic way like Uncharted 2.

[etownone]

Re4 was the best!

And capcom's decision to make re5 a co-op game is the reason it turned into more of an action game.
I liked because it was a great game, great graphics, controls like re4 (although dead space had better controls) and the fact that it was co-op was awesome because it made it fun with great replayability. If you want that creepy single player horror experience, I highly suggest dead space.

Bunch of whiners on N4G!

[Baka-akaB]

that quite false imo.
Nothing prevent RE to remain horror with co-op . hell i wont be surprised if Dead space 2 decides to have it .

Hell most horror movies arent so much about one dude on his own against the hidden horrors of the world . But quite often pit a group of people against it . And with the bonus drama , usually to highlight humanity itself , and how low some people will sink to survive .

And let's not forget the first online resident evil ...

Instead RE 5 feeled like at any moment , you'd ask Sheva to pass you some salt , while shooting down "terrorists" :p

I blame the game and design flaws , not the notion of co-op . And please it can't even compete against any other co-op game ...

Its co-op isnt that great or any better compared to army of two , gears of war , resistance , lost planet , anything else co-op... well i guess it's better than Haze for sure at least .

[The_Zeitgeist]

Resident Evil 1 and 2 were the best.
Nemesis was good but in a different way.
Resident Evil 0 was ok
Code Veronica was awesome
Resident Evil 4 was great until the midget came out to play
And 5 was just garbage I didn't even finish it. I got to chapter 8-8 and was done.

PLEASE CAPCOM BRING BACK CLASSIC RESIDENT EVIL!!! JUST DO A WHOLE NEW STORY LINE!!! ANYTHING BESIDES MORE OF 5.

[Pootangpie]

still am waiting for him to saw his own head off like he said during the interview

[sam2236]

Yeah, definitely. The RE series has been dead since the Outbreak games. Hell, RE4 and 5 shouldn't even be called Resident Evil.

[Bush]

I like the pic they are using of Jill Valentine I still want to try out Res 4. My Gamecube died and I am trying to find the PS2 version. Res 5 was alright but the AI chick was dumber than the survivors used in Left 4 Dead. The Resident Evil games should be taken back to their routes and re developed

[menoyou]

RE5 is garbage, RE4 was good but still didn't feel like an RE game. They need to go back to the way RE1 and RE2 were.

[very normal guy]

all the last of their series suck so sad...

[MonopolyRSV]

I say let it die. THey should work on finally making a truly great Dino Crisis exclusive for PS3 with plenty of horror element and suspense. Or better yet, a Resident Evil/Dino Crisis crossover game with both zombies AND dinosaurs.

[Picnic]

As people have said, an early version of RE4 turned in to Devil May Cry instead. However, to me, RE4 is still not dis-similar to Devil May Cry. Dante is like a more show off version of Leon Kennedy. I think that it was a conscious decision by Capcom to make you control someone who seems sure of himself so that you don't feel too overwhelmed when you are fighting some of the hideous enemies that you face - people with chainsaws and giant bosses. Unfortunately, I didn't identify with Leon Kennedy. I felt like I was controlling a showman.

RE4 was at its best when it was in its confined areas like the earlier games. But unlike those pre rendered rooms, there was little detail to dwell on in RE4 e.g. journals, items (except for weaponary), rooms full of objects. The game, almost entirely lacking puzzles, was all about moving on as quickly as you can because if you stayed around too long you'd have been very disappointed at the lack of anything to hold your interest.

The game shows a belated Japanese interest in Western horror e.g The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Where the remake was classy in its use of horror, there's nothing classy about people wielding chainsaws.
It's brute force and it can feel overdone and out of the blue.

The overall tone, often seemingly unintentially creepy (e.g. voice acting, the trader, kitsch sights like stone statue chasing you), doesn't seem to respect the brilliantly balanced approach of, say, the Gamecube Remake. But I think that this concentration on action has always threatened to take over the series and that the Remake (and the inferior RE0 to some extent) were exceptions rather than the rule.

RE6 should concentrate on the roots of survival horror and maybe take a few tips from the first Bioshock game as well. Set it in an old mansion with some parts of the city. Don't make it tongue in cheek with jokes like Dead Rising - it's a different kind of game. No multiplayer.